Mirin-Glazed Salmon With "Rice"

If I had to choose my "Top Ten Favourite Main Meals", this would be in it, I have a huge amount of favourites but this really is so tasty and Lucy and I always pestered our mum to make it for us.

She first discovered this Nigella Lawson recipe a few years ago, over time we've chopped and changed it. 

Nigella suggested we use sushi rice, we don't. Unless you like the taste of fishy rice pudding, which is what it reminded us of. Nowadays, we usually use basmati rice or if we're feeling funky, lots and lots of stir fried veggies (super tasty), but after all the hype about making cauliflower rice, I wanted to try it with this recipe.

For two-

Half a cauliflower head

1/2 tsp sesame oil

2 salmon steaks

30ml mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)

25g light brown sugar

30ml soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 spring onion, shredded

Cut your cauliflower in half and cut the half you are using into little trees.

Toss these into a blender or grate them or use your desired instrument of torture and continue until it's fine, like this.

Leave your cauliflower for now, you won't need it for a little bit.

Measure your mirin and soy, then pour into a shallow dish with the sugar and the rice vinegar.

Marinate the salmon in the sauce for 3 mins on the first side and 2 mins on the other, you don't need to be precise about this, I normally just plop it in, potter about, come back and turn it, you know, be relaxed, it's not the end of the world.

Heat a large, non stick frying pan and add the fish to it, and dry fry it, making sure the fish doesn't stick to the bottom. 

No crusty bottoms for us.

Just before you flip (the fish that is, this recipe isn't that annoying, I hope), put the cauli in a pan with a little bit of sesame oil, toss this about so it doesn't get stuck to the bottom and it all warms through.

Flip when the steak looks about 1/4 pink, from the bottom up, rather than orange, then pour the marinade that was left in the dish over the salmon.

Take it off when the salmon is pink all round (all in all about 4 mins), and it looks like this:

Pile your plate high with "rice", lay your salmon on top, top with the spring onions and drizzle with the marinade in the pan.

This doesn't actually taste of cauliflower.
After a few incidents with rather smelly steamed cauliflower, I think it's horrible but you can't really taste it at all with the sauce, plus it fills you right the way up, so no rumbly tummies before bed (my worst nightmare)!

I recently made some egg fried cauliflower rice for Josh, he loathes cauliflower, and his reaction was "I didn't expect to like it, like at all, but I really do! Can you make it again?", plus my mum's been requesting it too, I think I've got myself a winner!!